


New to Earth

by maychorian



Series: Rain Falling Down [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fluff, Gen, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 17:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19256140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maychorian/pseuds/maychorian
Summary: Ficlets based on the spn 30snapshots challenge for the Rain Falling Down AU. They'll mostly be about Castiel going through new human experiences.Originally posted to ff.n on 10-11-09.





	1. A Singularly Unpleasant Experience

The first time Jimmy cried while Castiel was trapped in his body, Castiel feared that something was seriously wrong with them. He had seen Dean and Sam cry before, even other humans, but he never understood it. He had found the action curious, and curiously unhelpful. He did not understand why anyone would do that, what they hoped to gain from it.

Experiencing it from the inside was entirely different. He felt a strange ache in his chest and lungs. His head felt too full, and the flesh around his eyes began to hurt. Even his head pained him, and his fingers and toes tingled. It was like something was inside little Jimmy's body, pushing to get out, expanding and expanding until it must burst from under his skin.

At the same time, the emotional upheaval was excruciating. It had been a long, exhausting day already, and then Robert Singer asked what he was supposed to do with Jimmy, if he had any folks. Jimmy flashed back to the night he lost his parents, fire and blood and demon-smoke, and that made Castiel remember what had brought him to attempt this step in time, and it was all just too much. The fear and grief and pain was unimaginable, overwhelming, and both Jimmy and Castiel only built on each other until the sole response they had was tears, tears in a downpour, a deluge, a flood. "I'm all alone, Mr. Singer," they said, both of them. "I can never go home. I can never go home, not ever."

They wept until they were far beyond exhaustion, wrapped up in Bobby Singer's arms until the flow finally began to slow, then stopped. Castiel found it to be a singularly nasty experience, painful and tiring like nothing he'd ever done before. And the lack of control over it was particularly disturbing. Several times he had tried to mitigate the physiological and emotional reactions, and had been entirely unsuccessful. Jimmy, though, had simply ridden it out, used to being a child and going through the tantrums his body and spirit chose to throw.

Castiel apologized to Singer for the profusion of bodily fluids he'd left on his shoulder, but the man just hushed him. He had held Jimmy and Castiel through it all, stroking the dark, messy hair still tacky with residual blood, soothing them with words and actions and immense, unfathomable kindness. And Castiel felt a rush of warmth and well-being like nothing he'd ever known.

It was Jimmy's, but also his. Then, Castiel remembered what Dean had called this man when he was a child.

Uncle Bobby.

Jimmy grabbed onto that notion as soon as it entered their mind. And Bobby Singer accepted it. Despite how much he ached, inside and out, despite how sore his eyes and throat and chest were, Castiel could feel Jimmy's giddy sense of relief and release, too. He began to understand why humans cried.

Castiel would always consider it to be a singularly unpleasant experience, but it hadn't been completely terrible.

(End)


	2. The subtle grace of gravity, the heavy weight of stone

Angels had no fear of the dark. They did not need physical light to see, and the invisible light of the Father was everywhere, illuminating the universe. Castiel had only ever found the dark to be beautiful, as full of wonders as the brightest noontide. But now he felt what Jimmy felt, saw what he saw, lived what he lived. And young Jimmy feared the dark intensely, because he had been locked inside it for far too long, not once but many times.

Uncle Bobby understood this immediately, fortunately. Once he gathered that "that bastard" had kept Jimmy locked in a closet, he bought several nightlights and placed them around the house, in Jimmy's room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the hallway and stairs between. He hadn't even needed to be asked, which was well, since Jimmy was entirely unable to articulate his need.

For his part, Castiel tried to comfort the boy in his own way. When Jimmy lay trembling in the dark, trying not to remember, he filled their shared mind with images of light, stars, his brothers and sisters, as much of Heaven as he could filter to mortal tolerance. Mere glimpses, only, but Jimmy gasped at the brilliance of them, startled out of his fear. Slowly, carefully, Castiel tried to bring him a sense of his own feeling of the dark, how he could sense the shapes and beauty within it, the delicate flutter of a night-flying moth, the swaying flowers that blossomed only in the moonlight, the immense openness and freedom of the space between the galaxies.

Dean figured it out pretty quickly, too, with his big eyes and concerned little face, always looking out for the people he loved (whose ranks Jimmy had joined almost instantly). His solution was a lot less subtle.

Young Dean Winchester loved flashlights.

Once the Winchesters entered their lives in this timeline, Castiel was quickly introduced to another human tradition. The "sleepover." Jimmy showed the younger boy how to make a tent out of the bedclothes, but Dean was the one who had brought his daddy's heavy flashlight, the sort that could have served as a club in a pinch. Castiel refrained from asking if he had John's permission to use it, feeling that discretion might be the better part of valor in this case. It made Jimmy happy, anyway, the light so bright and encompassing, and the boys giggled and read comic books under the blankets until far too late in the night, shushing each other unsuccessfully when their voices raised too high in childish glee.

Castiel wished that he could unfold his wings, wrap them around both boys and protect them from the night forever. But his wings only trembled in their bonds, broken feathers rustling over bent and unhealed bones, and Castiel released a silent sigh and stopped trying.

Perhaps the boys felt his efforts, even so, because they quieted, then, as if listening to the sounds of the dark hidden outside their circle of light and comfort. They were wary, but not afraid, and Dean looked at Jimmy as if he knew that someone else was inside him, looking out through his eyes. Castiel shivered and withdrew, hiding deep inside the boy's spirit. It wasn't time to show himself to Dean. Even Bobby could not believe in the truth of an angelic presence—how could this little child be expected to understand?

Better to sit in waiting, giving himself time to heal, preparing for a distant time when Castiel would have to reveal himself in the light. Sometimes the dark could be a blessing, too, a softness and a shelter, and he was content to rest inside it. For now.

(End)

Soundtrack: You Are the Moon - The Hush Sound


	3. Blink and You'll Miss It

Most of the time, John did his best to avoid Jimmy. He found the little psychic deeply unsettling, though he no longer thought him to be dangerous. He was glad Dean had a friend, and such a kind, perceptive, devoted one at that. But he had absolutely no desire to have to explain to his son that his friend was slightly crazy, and his presence seemed to bring it out in the poor kid, so he felt it was best to just stay out of the way.

There were times, though, when John couldn't help himself. Such as now, when he came down the back steps and found Jimmy sitting on a plastic crate and staring into the trees behind Singer's property, blinking rapidly and erratically.

Kids didn't blink that much for no reason. Was he sick? Crying? John glanced around, helplessly, already knowing that he was on his own. Bobby was off making a grocery run and John's boys were playing with blocks in the living room. (After many, many, many towers built and knocked down by gleeful little Sammy, laughing and crowing his delight as the wood clattered to the carpet, even Jimmy's seemingly infinite patience had finally run out. Dean, of course, was still in there, building away for his baby brother's amusement.)

"Jimmy?" John approached cautiously, tilting his head down to look in the boy's face. "Kiddo? Somethin' going on?"

The success of his offering of hot chocolate notwithstanding, John still had no clue of how to deal with this kid. Not just the tiny psychic with his serious expression and his horrific words, but also the little boy who had been beaten and abused, who even now sometimes curled up in a tight, shaking ball to hide from the world. Never mind the kid with two personalities living in the same thin little frame—that one John hadn't even the  _slightest_  idea of how to deal with. While Bobby Singer always seemed to instinctively know exactly how to react to any situation, John more often found himself flailing ineffectually on the sidelines.

Sometimes he suspected that Bobby was a better father than he would ever be.

In this particular instance, though, Jimmy just tilted his head to match the angle of John's and blinked deliberately, twice. His expression was almost preternaturally calm and grave. "I'm still getting used to eyelids."

John could only blink in response. "Eye...eyelids?" he faltered.

The boy frowned. "That is, I'm getting used to the blink, how it blocks sight for a moment. It never did, before... Before. I didn't need to lubricate Jimmy's eyes, so the blink was unnecessary, and even with the eyes shut I could still see. But sight is different now." He let out a long, drawn-out sigh, somehow weary and bewildered and resigned all at once. "A lot of things are different now."

John frowned. "Uh...Castiel?" he asked. Bobby had told him about Castiel, Jimmy's second personality, who believed he was an angel from the future. For all John knew he'd conversed with this persona before and not known it, but Castiel's presence was fairly plain, this time.

The boy nodded. "Eyelids are weird."

Unconsciously, John reached up to rub his own eyes, feeling the slide of fragile flesh. Yeah, actually...eyelids  _were_  kind of weird, these thin little shields to protect the most vulnerable and most precious part of the face. He pressed against them with thumb and forefinger, feeling the give of the eyeballs underneath, the thick, slow, viscous roll. So easy to press in, to tear, to destroy.

"Are you going to the back of the lot for target practice?" Castiel asked.

John moved his hand and opened his eyes to look down at him. The boy had stopped blinking, watching him with strange intensity. "Yeah, that's right."

"May I watch?"

John glanced at the house, but he trusted Dean to watch out for Sammy, and he'd been planning to make this a short session, anyway. "Sure. You know where Bobby keeps the headgear?"

Jimmy-Castiel nodded and hopped off the crate, heading for the shed where Bobby stored his jury-rigged muffles for ear protection during gun practice. He knew all the precautions and procedures already, as did Dean, though John hadn't yet allowed his son to hold a gun.

Soon though. And judging by this boy's concentration, the way he watched John's hands on the gun, the bullets, how held himself, how he aimed and fired, aimed and fired, Jimmy or Castiel or both would want to learn, too. The gun cracked in the crisp autumn air and the smell of cordite laced the healthy, natural scent of fallen leaves and ripened fields, and John's bullets clustered on the target in tiny, tight constellations, careful and controlled. And for this sight, Castiel did not blink at all.

(End)


End file.
